


The Best of You

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate History, Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sulu is working as a young botanical researcher in the Amazon when Captain Christopher Pike pays him a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best of You

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, there was a prompt on the old kink meme asking for Pike recruiting the other members of the crew. I recall that this particular scenario was mentioned by name in the prompt, but I certainly don’t know where to start looking for it, and I’ve held onto that image for the last ~two years. When I got Pike and Sulu and AU for [this meme](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/65992.html), that image resurfaced, and this came out of it. Thank you to whoever posted that prompt eons ago; this is for you.

*

“That’s your guy.”

Captain Christopher Pike looked up from his gin (straight, because he didn’t trust the bartender—the same one talking to him then—to mix a martini as good as Boyce), and frowned first at the man on the other side of the bar, and then followed his gaze across the room.

“Said you were looking for Sulu, right?”

“Yeah, I am,” he said shortly. Pike regretted saying anything at all to him, but Hikaru Sulu, who was sliding into a stool at the end of the bar, was a tough kid to track down. “I’m going to finish my drink first.”

“Sure thing.” And then the bartender was gone, throwing his towel over his shoulder and shouting down the bar to Sulu in the creole dialect that everyone seemed to use this deep in the Amazon. Sulu laughed and called something back that Pike couldn’t make out, but he didn’t care. He almost preferred it if Sulu was a few drinks down before he went down to talk to him.

Seven months prior, he’d given up the _Yorktown_ and taken the assignment as chief recruitment officer, the cushy ground job that came with it, and a heap of other problems. Boyce had gone with One and the _Yorktown_ , and Pike hadn’t had a decent drink or a good nights’ sleep since then. Starfleet was in trouble. Pike’s sanity was worse off.

Sulu, it turned out, was a beer kind of guy. Pike waited twenty minutes and had another gin before he finished the first one and called for a second. When he did, Pike lifted his fingers and nodded to Sulu to indicate that he’d pay for it. When the bartender dropped off Sulu’s beer, he stared at it for a few seconds, and then took a sip, watching Pike cautiously.

At some point the second day in his search, Pike caught on that this wasn’t the kind of place where his Starfleet uniform got him far. He’d donned a pair of jeans and a button-up he’d have worn at home in Mojave, and since then found that the locals were a little more relaxed around him. Sometimes, often, Pike wondered where he’d lost his sense for living on Earth and gotten caught up in the chaos of captaining the _Yorktown._ Times like this, he thought that One had been right to recommend that he take this job, even when it was hard.

When he stood up and wandered down toward Sulu, he kept his gin in his hand and leaned against the bar next to him. He knew it made him look casual about it, but it was more to keep himself together. He had a few more years of this, and then a new ship; a new chance. That was worth a few weird recruitments like this if it secured him a good crew to go with it.

“You’re Hikaru Sulu,” he said by way of introduction, and Sulu finished another swallow of beer.

“Thanks for the beer.” His eyes swept up Pike from his boots up. “I’m not really interested in going home with anyone, though.” Pike heard the implication behind the words, and his countenance cracked into an amused smile.

“I’m not interested in getting in your pants, Sulu.”

He looked skeptical, but then he waved to the barstool next to him, pulling an old black leather shoulder bag down and replacing it on his other side cautiously. Glass clinked together, and Sulu peered inside before exhaling slowly, looking for a moment every bit of his eighteen years. “I’m not even sure how you know who I am.”

“I’m Captain Christopher Pike,” he said and sat down, leaning his weight into his elbow on the bar. “I came out here looking to talk to you.”

Sulu’s eyebrows knitted together. “I didn’t think my research was of much interest to Starfleet.”

“Tracking endangered epiphytes isn’t really on our agenda.” Pike turned toward the bar and steepled his fingers, looking over at the glow of the lights behind the bar.

“I don’t get it, then,” Sulu sighed impatiently, his beer apparently forgotten. “Didn’t you talk to my recruitment officer?”

“She said you washed out of the astrophysics exam because your father’s ship was attacked the day before.” Pike looked over at him calmly and tapped his fingers on the sides of his glass. “You can’t be blamed for that.”

Sulu bristled a little, but visibly quashed the emotion. “I washed out of the astrophysics exam because I wasn’t good enough to join the sciences division.” Pike watched emotions play on his face, and then his eyes darkened again. Sulu leaned closer. “You didn’t really come all the way to the Amazon to talk to me about my scores, did you?”

“I came here to talk about you, Sulu. Specifically where your future is headed with this job.” Pike watched him again, but this time Sulu clamped down on his mood faster than Pike could follow it. “You’ve got a bag of samples you’ll turn in there, and you’ll fly around the Amazon for a year looking for more, and enjoy some survival training. And then what?”

“And then I’ll go back and—”

“And get a university degree,” Pike continued without missing a beat; without giving Sulu the chance to finish. “And write some papers. You’ll be brilliant, you’ll get some offers. You’ll take them, travel here and again to other planets for conferences and some interesting field work. Rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Am I right?”

“You make it sound like a bad life.” Sulu was offended. For a moment, Pike thought he’d get up and leave, but Sulu didn’t move.

“For some people it’s not. For you, it would be torture. Come back to San Francisco. I’ll sponsor your application to the fleet.”

Sulu pushed his beer away and his lips pressed together tightly. “And instead I’ll do the same thing on alien planets and discover new plants in the name of the Federation?”

“Your plants aren’t really interesting,” Pike said bluntly, throwing back the rest of his gin. “The scrap heap you fly to get to them is.”

Sulu’s face changed immediately, cracking the shell of indifference and hint of resentment in favor of open astonishment. “ _What?_ ”

“Lieutenant Commander Belizaire failed to mention your results on the technical aspects of the exam, didn’t she?” Pike tapped his glass again. “Usually it doesn’t matter. If a potential cadet doesn’t score within the desired percentile on the portion of the exam pertaining to their division of interest, that’s it. They don’t usually do well enough on the others for it to matter.”

“What are you even talking about?” Sulu shook his head, and then rubbed his forehead, looking pained. “I took a few aptitude tests. I was ten percentile points short for astrophysics, and my father had just died. Even if I couldn’t be blamed for failing the exam, I would have failed the stress tests.”

Pike’s stomach twisted up at those words. He’d wanted to quit before, when things had gotten bad. Things weren’t ideal in the Federation, not in the way they’d been a few decades before. Officers died every day serving and protecting the Federation so kids like Hikaru Sulu could study plants in the Amazon and Pike could track them down and try to rope them into the same kind of uncertain service. Kids like himself, who had been inspired rather than repulsed by the _Kelvin_ , were easy recruits, but they were few and far between and just as easily jaded.

“It’s not always easy, Sulu,” he began, keeping his voice low and even so Sulu would have to actually listen to hear him. “It’s dangerous out there, and you’ll get homesick. You’ll see tough stuff. There will be a new, unique problem every day, and sometimes you’ll lose people. You’ll lose _friends,_ because that’s the kind of universe we’re living in. But you’ll get up every morning and you’ll be challenged and you’ll overcome those challenges.” Pike met Sulu’s peculiar expression with an even stare. Sulu didn’t look away. “I looked at your aptitude tests. You did more than beat out one of the best officers in Starfleet, the _best_ officer I know, on your exams; you’re the kind of man who wants that kind of life, Sulu.”

“I’m really sorry you came all this way, Captain Pike, but I’m not Starfleet material.” Sulu pulled his eyes away finally. “I’m sorry.”

Pike frowned, and then tapped the empty glass on the counter, shaking his head when the bartender looked up to see if he wanted more. “I guess I dragged my ass all the way to the middle of nowhere for nothing.” He pushed the glass away and dropped a few credits onto the bar, looking down at Sulu and allowing the kid to look back up at him. “Have a good night, kid.”

Sulu sat back and watched him go. Pike felt his eyes on his back when he left the bar without another word. He was halfway through town to the transporter station when he heard the sound of tinkling glass and the rhythmic thud of footsteps.

“Captain Pike,” Sulu yelled, even though Pike was already turning toward him. When he caught up to him, he steadied the bag on his shoulder and caught his breath before pushing out, “What tests did I pass?”

Pike smiled at him, cracking one more time for his flushed, earnest face. “The flight simulator, Sulu,” he told him simply, and patted his shoulder, then turned and left him there in the street. He would need time to think it over, anyway. “Good night, cadet.”


End file.
